JAQUES, Sir Roger (d. 1653), of Colliergate, Holy Trinity, King’s Square, York, and Elvington, Yorks.

Jaques’s grandfather, the scion of a north Yorkshire family, had established himself as a merchant in York during the Elizabethan period.1York City Lib. Skaife mss, SKA/2, f. 418. Although Jaques, too, was a merchant and clearly part of the city’s commercial elite, he appears to have sunk more of his wealth into money-lending and lead mining ventures than he did into maritime commerce.2Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay, 196, 197; Wilson, ‘York’, 324, 325. His residence in Colliergate was described as a ‘little house’ – or at least was regarded as such for a man of his standing.3York City Archives, Y/ORD/4/2, E/63, f. 56v.

An active member of the corporation and a keen defender of the city’s privileges, Jaques was elected an alderman in 1638 and appears to have been on good terms with York’s principal patron Thomas Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), the future earl of Strafford.4York City Archives, York House bk. 35, ff. 256, 280, 313; Bodl. Firth b.2, f. 181. Jaques’s stock improved further in March 1639 when, as lord mayor, he played host to the king – to whom he had been presented at court by his brother-in-law Sir Marmaduke Rawdon† in 1638 – who stopped briefly at York on his way north to confront the Scottish Covenanters. Charles was lavishly entertained by the leading citizens and knighted Jaques for his pains.5Bodl. Gough Yorks. 8, ff. 130-1; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 48; Life of Marmaduke Rawdon ed. R. Davies (Cam. Soc. lxxxv), 25, 126. The following month, two of the king’s foremost aristocratic opponents, Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke, were committed ‘close prisoners’ to Jaques as lord mayor following their refusal to take an oath pledging their lives and fortunes to Charles’s war against the Covenanters.6CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 67, 98. It was probably on the strength of his interest with Strafford as much as his standing in York that Jaques was returned for the city in the elections to the Short Parliament on 16 March 1640, taking the second place behind the earl’s right-hand man on the council of the north, Sir Edward Osborne.7Supra, ‘York’.

Jaques’s parliamentary career began and ended with his election. He received no appointments in the Short Parliament and made no recorded contributions to debate. By the autumn of 1640, the corporation had severed its ties with Strafford; and in the elections to the Long Parliament the city returned two of the earl’s puritan opponents: aldermen Sir William Allanson and Thomas Hoyle.8Supra, ‘York’. Jaques remained a prominent and active member of the corporation, however, and in January 1642 he was appointed a municipal commissioner to disarm and execute the laws against Catholics.9York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 57v. One of only six aldermen who received the king when he arrived at York in March 1642, he continued to attend the corporation after the city was made a royalist garrison later that year.10York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 69v; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay, 195. It was alleged after the civil war that he had helped execute the commission of array, although he insisted that he had been ‘forced thereunto’.11Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay, 195, 195.

After the battle of Marston Moor and the city’s surrender to Parliament in July 1644, Jaques ceased to attend council meetings; and in January 1645, he and five other aldermen were removed from the bench by parliamentary ordinance for being ‘much disaffected to the service of the king and Parliament’.12LJ vii. 120a; York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 118. Jaques’s composition fine of £896 – the largest of the six aldermen displaced in 1645 – was reduced to £840 ‘in respect that many of his debts be desperate’. He appears to have paid only £258 of this sum and a further £300 of a £400 fine imposed on him by the Yorkshire sequestration committee.13CCC 882; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay, 197-200; Wilson, ‘York’, 289.

Jaques died intestate at his country seat of Elvington on 19 October 1653 and was buried there the following day.14York City Lib. Skaife mss, SKA/2, f. 418; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 130. His daughter Grace married Charles Allanson, eldest son of Sir William Allanson, and his son Henry married one of Allanson’s daughters.15Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 130, 131. Jaques was the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.